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Thursday, June 05, 2014

It is commonplace to attribute much of Israel’s domestic tensions to
supposed Jewish discrimination against the country’s Arab citizens.[1]
Nearly every Israeli Arab nongovernmental organization insists that
such discrimination characterizes the Jewish state in general and its
labor markets in particular.[2] The
Israeli media routinely interview Israeli Arabs (and non-Ashkenazi
Jews) who claim to have been victims of discrimination. These
allegations are echoed by Jewish Israeli academics, think tanks, and
journalists, especially on the political Left, not to mention the
international anti-Israel movement and the boycott, divestment, and
sanctions campaign. Indeed, the U.S. Department of State has even joined
the growing outcry concerning Israel’s alleged racist discrimination
against its Arab citizens.[3]
Of course, in reality, Israel is the only Middle Eastern entity that
is not an apartheid regime, and the apartheid slander holds no water
whatsoever save in the minds of the Jewish state’s enemies and defamers.
Yet discrimination is a scientifically empirical question subject to
testing and not a matter of subjective personal opinion. Stripping away
the venomous anti-Israel rhetoric, the legitimate question remains
whether and how much discrimination really exists in Israel.

Inequality Myths

Ethnicity in Israel is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. Both
Jews and Arabs are subdivided into ethnic sub-groups, making exploration
and analysis of ethnic disparities a complex challenge. In official
statistical data on income, Israeli Arabs are treated as a single
population group, but this is somewhat misleading. There are important
differences in socio-economic status and performance among Arab
Christians, Arab Muslims, and Druse. Those sub-categories are in fact
amalgams of even smaller divisions. For example, there are interesting
differences between “ordinary” Arab Muslims and Bedouins. The Israeli
Income Survey sample does not include the Arab population of the
“occupied territories,” except for East Jerusalem and the small
population of the Golan Heights, both of which are formally annexed to
Israel.
Ethnicity among Jews is even more complex. It is commonly measured in
Israel for statistical purposes based upon the continent of birth of
the person or the person’s father. Jews born in Asia and Africa (or the
children of fathers born there) correspond roughly to Sephardic or
Mizrahi Jews. Those born in Europe, the United States, or Australia (and
their children) correspond roughly to Ashkenazi or Western Jews. These
distinctions are imperfect as there are Ashkenazi Jews who come from
Asia and Africa (including South Africa and some Egyptian Jews) and
Sephardic Jews who come from Europe (including from Greece, Yugoslavia,
and Bulgaria). Over time this “continent of birth” criterion for
defining ethnicity is losing its validity because of the rapid increase
in native-born Israelis who are themselves sons and daughters of
native-born Israelis. In addition, the high intermarriage rate among
Jews in Israel from different communities is blurring ethnic
distinctions.[4]
Before tackling the specific patterns of ethnic inequality and
discrimination in Israeli labor markets, it is necessary to dispose of
certain myths and superstitions, beginning with the assumption that
heterogeneity proves discrimination. It is a common but mistaken belief
that, in the absence of discrimination, the numerical representation in
any profession or wage range for all groups in a society should be the
same as the proportion of that group in the general population. This
might be called the false axiom of “natural homogeneity.” Thus if Group A
is over-represented in a profession, compared with its weight in the
general population, then it must be the beneficiary of discrimination in
its favor. If Group B is under-represented, it must be suffering from
discrimination against its members. Many then conclude that affirmative
action quotas are needed to remedy the problem. This is known as the
“disparate impact” standard or pseudo-evidence.[5]
But the axiom of natural homogeneity is completely specious. Nowhere
in the real world does fair competition produce homogeneous
representation in any market. Indeed, the only way in which such
homogeneity can be achieved is through a rigid anti-competitive system
of assignments in hiring or admissions by quota, one that suppresses
individual interests, skills, culture, economics, family, educational
and regional backgrounds, and meritocracy.
The world is full of examples of radical departures from numerical
homogeneity in representation that clearly have nothing at all to do
with discrimination: Jews around the world are over-represented among
those admitted into universities relative to their numbers in the
general population even in countries that have official policies of
discriminating against Jews. Asian Americans are also over-represented
among U.S. college students but not because these colleges discriminate
against non-Asians. American blacks are not prominent in sports because
of anti-white discrimination. About 60 percent of the medical students
in Israel are women, and this is not because the medical schools
discriminate against men. Israeli Arabs are grossly over-represented
among students in schools of pharmacy, and it is not because these
schools discriminate against Jews. Men are enormously over-represented
among the prison populations in all countries, and it is not because of
gender discrimination. And so on and so forth.

About
60 percent of Israeli medical students are women while Israeli Arabs
are over-represented in schools of pharmacy. This is not because these
schools discriminate against male Jews. Israeli Arabs own
proportionately twice as many cars as Israeli Jews; no one has suggested
that this attests to discrimination against Jews.

The fallaciousness of the idea that discrimination is proven by
deviation from numerical homogeneity in representation cannot be
over-emphasized. It crops up in almost every debate about ethnic or
gender discrimination. When feminists, media commentators, and even many
academics wish to prove that discrimination exists, their proof usually
consists of presenting numbers that show departure from homogeneity.
Such figures are selected when they serve the agenda of the commentator
or advocate. Yet it turns out that Israeli Arabs own proportionately
twice as many cars as Israeli Jews;[6] no one has suggested that this attests to discrimination in Israel against Jews.
In 2013, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz ran an exposé about
supposed discrimination against Israeli Arabs by Israeli banks, which
quickly became the focus of a parliamentary investigation.[7]
The alleged evidence was that Israeli Arabs were paying, on average,
higher bank fees than Jews for certain services. But a closer look
showed that Arab bank accounts tend to be held in small rural banks with
higher per-unit costs and may both be smaller on average and in
different sorts of accounts than those held by Jews. For example, Arabs
hold fewer long-term provident savings or retirement accounts, in part
because the age structure of the Arab population is younger than its
Jewish counterpart. All this results in different arrays of fees being
charged but has nothing to do with discrimination. However, such an
explanation would provide little sensationalist grist for the media or
headline-grabbing power for politicians.
If numerical representation and deviation from natural homogeneity
add nothing in terms of understanding discrimination, what about
analyzing differences in wages and salaries directly? It would seem that
if discrimination does indeed exist in a society, the most promising
arena to seek it out is the labor market. But here, too, problems exist.
Analysis of possible discrimination as reflected in labor market
wages has the advantage of being able to utilize a rich data set, unlike
other markets in which discrimination is alleged. It also matters more.
Few, including Arab leaders, would care very much if, after controlling
for all the other possible explanations, Israeli Arabs were really
paying higher bank fees than Jews. But everyone would think it is
important if Arabs were the victims of wage discrimination. Having noted
this, it still needs to be emphasized that the mere documentation of a
disparity in wages between Jews and Arabs does not in and of itself
prove anything, much less discrimination.
Consider the following situation: Suppose that it is found that
45-year-old Israeli Jewish software engineers with postgraduate degrees
earn several times the wages of 20-year-old Arab youths who never
finished high school. Would this datum be evidence of discrimination
against Arabs in the labor market?
Of course, 45-year-old engineers in any ethnic population generally
earn far more than 20-year-old high school dropouts. Their labor is
simply worth more, and the market prices it accordingly. If one controls
for education, age, and field of study, it is possible to compare
45-year-old Jewish engineers with Arab engineers, or 20-year-old Jewish
with Arab high school dropouts, to see if there are any residual gaps in
wages. There could also be other factors not yet taken into account
that explain observed residual disparities, for example, disparities
between wages in rural/peripheral labor markets and those in
metropolitan areas. Any suspected ethnic discrimination is tentative and
needs to be assessed in light of many other non-ethnic factors that
affect wages.
Special attention needs to be paid to differences in labor force
participation rates. Arab women in Israel, especially married Muslim
women, have very low participation rates. This means that most employed
Arab women are young and not yet married, which in turn generates a
considerable gap in earnings levels when compared with Jewish women (and
men of all groups). Gender differences in wages must be separated out
to understand patterns of ethnic inequality.
It has been demonstrated in other countries that something as
innocuous as age structure may often explain a considerable portion of
disparities in earnings across ethnic/racial groups. For example, the
eminent economist Thomas Sowell has demonstrated that one of the major
causes for racial inequality in the United States is age difference,
with the black and Hispanic population considerably younger than the
white population for a variety of demographic reasons. He pointed out
that “Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans have median ages of less than
twenty years while the average Irish American or Italian American is
more than thirty years old, and Jewish Americans are over forty.”[8]
Since 40-year-olds invariably earn far more than 20-year-olds, a
significant portion of earnings disparities among American ethnic groups
reflects nothing more than age structure differences.
Age structure also explains part of the earning differences in Israel
since Israeli Jews are on average considerably older than Israeli
Arabs, particularly Israeli Muslims. It is estimated that the median age
of Muslim Israelis is 19 while the median age of Jewish Israelis is 31.[9]
(Interestingly, Christian Arabs have an age structure similar to that
of Jews, with median age 30, and also have mean earnings very close to
those of Jews.) So an age-explained earnings gap similar to that in the
United States arises where age explains part of ethnic inequality.

Data and Raw Inequality Patterns

The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) conducts an annual
survey of income and wages. It is a large, scientifically-designed,
representative survey that covers the entire Israeli population
excluding the population in the “occupied territories,” foreign
temporary workers, and tourists. The CBS is staffed with professional
statisticians of the highest caliber, and its operations are in line
with international standards of professionalism and integrity.
Part of the income survey is based on households (N = 14,996) and
measures income at the household level from various sources. Another is
based on income from salary and other sources for individual earners
(N=35,680) aged over 15. A household can have multiple earners. Income
measured includes that from salaries, self-employment, capital, pension,
alimony, social insurance, governmental support, and other categories.[10]
Other variables contained in the survey include age, marital status,
schooling, ethnicity, occupation, and location of residence.[11]
What does the income survey show about ethnic inequality in Israel?
One can begin to digest the data starting with the raw numbers and
measures of earnings, not adjusted for variables such as age and years
of schooling. These numbers explain little about actual patterns of
income inequality in Israel but offer a starting point for exploration.
In the Israeli “Income Survey of 2011,” the average salary for the
entire population of Israeli Arab males was 50.2 percent of the mean for
the entire population of Jewish males. Jewish females on average earned
salaries that were 61.8 percent of those of Jewish males. Arab females
earned only 34 percent of the salaries of Arab males and 28 percent of
the salaries of Jewish females,[12]
but this was no doubt in part because of part-time employment common
among Arab women. Raw household income disparities follow a somewhat
different pattern because salaries are only one component of household
income. Household income for Arabs was about 55 percent that of Jews.
While these raw disparities appear large, they are not unusual when
comparing across ethnic populations within countries. The real question
remains what is causing them.
There are also disparities in the raw figures among subgroups of
Jews, to some extent caused by age structure. The groups with the
highest salaries and household incomes are native-born Jews. Those born
elsewhere are usually divided between recent immigrants and earlier
immigrants. The dividing line for distinguishing recent immigrants is
necessarily arbitrary; in the discussion here, the cutoff used is 1990.
In the last two decades, the largest group of new immigrants has been
from the former Soviet Union. A separate smaller group, about whose
economic performance relatively little is known, consists of Jewish
immigrants from Ethiopia. These will be separated out here from other
immigrants by distinguishing them as recent immigrants born in Africa.
This, too, is an imperfect measure, and some Jews from North African
countries and from South Africa are probably mixed into this sub-sample
definition as well.
Among native-born Israelis, the Ashkenazi males earn 16 percent more
than the Mizrahi/Sephardic males. Ashkenazi and Mizrahi females earn
exactly the same average salaries, which are about 40 percent lower than
for native-born Ashkenazi males. Among foreign-born Jews, Mizrahim earn
average salaries 32 percent lower than Ashkenazim for males, and 39
percent lower for females. Women in all population groups earn less than
men in the same groups.
So the starting point is a set of seemingly wide disparities in
average earnings across Israeli ethnic groups. Jews earn more than
Arabs, in fact twice as much on average; women earn less than men;
Mizrahim earn less than Ashkenazim. Two additional caveats need to be
mentioned. First, these numbers are based on reported salaries. While
survey respondents were told the information was confidential and would
not be passed on to the tax authorities, it is possible that some of the
salary numbers are in fact under-reported. Israel is thought to have a
significant underground or unreported economy where cash is earned under
the table. For a variety of reasons, including concentrations in
occupations in which non-reporting is easier and more common, it is
generally believed that non-reporting of income is higher among Arabs
than among Jews.
An additional caveat is that disparities across ethnic groups in
salaries and in household income are different from disparities in
household expenditures. Standards of living are ultimately measured in
real consumption rather than in monetary terms, and in Israel, gaps in
levels of expenditure among the ethnic groups are considerably smaller
than those in salaries or incomes. In addition, intentional
under-reporting of income is unlikely to affect reported levels of
expenditure, and so these data may be more reliable. The bottom line is
that raw inequality among Israeli ethnic groups is considerably smaller
when measured in terms of expenditures rather than incomes.

Analysis of Individual Salary and Earnings

To understand properly the role of ethnicity in explaining
disparities in earnings, one needs to take into account other non-ethnic
factors that affect earnings, notably gender, age, education (measured
in several different ways), marital status, number of persons in
household, immigration status (new immigrant vs. not), membership in
certain elite professions such as manager or engineer, and geographic
variables (residence in one of the large cities, in medium-sized towns,
etc.). Statistical estimates of the impact upon earnings by individuals
of a variety of ethnic, demographic, and other factors are presented in
Table 1 below.
First, after controlling for age, education, and other non-ethnic
explanatory variables, is it really the case that Arabs underperform in
the Israeli labor market when compared with Jews? The answer is
generally, no. It does depend on which definition of earnings is being
used.
When estimating only salaries for both men and women together (not
shown in the table), Arabs do indeed underperform when compared with
Jews. The difference is not very large (approximately 450 shekels a
month or a bit over $100), and this is very small when compared to the
raw disparity between earnings of Jews and Arabs, seen above as being
approximately a 100 percent difference. The disadvantage in salary
earnings for Arabs is about the same as that experienced by Jewish new
immigrants in Israel.
But salaries are only one component of individual earnings. Salaries
are what employees receive from employers while “all individual
earnings” include things such as self-employed income by artisans or
shop-owners or owners of proprietary establishments. Such self-employed
and proprietary income is probably more common among Arabs than Jews,
the latter being more likely to be salaried employees. The numbers in
the table here show the results when analyzing all individual earnings
from all sources, including such non-salary sources. When controlling
for age, schooling, and the other non-ethnic factors, Israeli Arabs
outperform Jews on average, earning more than Jews of similar age and
schooling levels. Indeed, on average Arabs earn more than both Ashkenazi
and Sephardic Jews, about 9 percent higher, other things being equal.
The fact that the labor market disadvantage of Israeli Arabs
disappears entirely when total individual earnings (as opposed to
salaries alone) are analyzed may be because many Arabs are
self-employed.[13] In any case, it
turns out that not only do non-ethnic factors explain the bulk of the
raw disparity in earnings between Israeli Arabs and Jews, but in many
cases they explain more than the total disparity. In the case of total
individual earnings income, they explain more than 100 percent of the
raw disparity (meaning that, after controlling for explanatory
variables, Arabs actually outperform Jews).
The picture becomes clearer when men and women earners are analyzed
separately. This has the advantage of removing gender differences in
labor force participation rates from the analysis of the role of
ethnicity. The gap in earnings for Arab women compared with Jewish women
is quite small when controlling for other variables; it is only about 2
percent to the advantage of Jews. But for males, Arabs are at a 10
percent advantage over Jews in total individual earnings. Again, Arabs
outperform Jews.

It
is important to distinguish between salaries and earnings. For example,
Israeli Arab males may make on average 50 percent less than Israeli
Jewish males in salary, but in earnings (which include income sources
such as self-employment), they out-perform Israeli Jews by approximately
9 percent on average.

Arabs also have a disadvantage compared with Jews when it comes to
total household earnings (not shown in the table), as opposed to total
individual earnings. But the wider gap at the household earnings level
is due to factors outside the labor market. Jews have higher savings
rates than Arabs, and thus have higher levels of household capital
income.[14] Jews are also older and
so receive on average higher amounts of retirement income. These
disparities in non-labor income at the level of households largely
reflect differences between Jews and Arabs in savings behavior and
household composition and cannot be attributed to labor market
discrimination.
What about disparities across ethnic sub-groups of Israeli Jews? The
first notable pattern is this: The main group that over-performs
compared with others is native-born Israeli Jews or sabras. Being
born in the country confers a distinct earnings advantage in Israel as
it does in most other countries. There is a modest advantage in income,
about 8 percent for men and 2 percent for women, for those who are
native-born Israeli Jews, compared with those who are foreign-born. And
this is true for both Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews.
When controlling for other non-ethnic factors, Ashkenazim have a
small advantage over Mizrahim among men, about 2 percent for total
individual income and 4 percent for salary alone, much smaller than the
gap in the raw earnings numbers, and much smaller than the premium
enjoyed by native-born Jews. For women, Ashkenazim slightly underperform
Mizrahim. More generally, because of the advantage of being a sabra,
a native-born Mizrahi Jew would generally outperform a non-native
Ashkenazi Jew, other things being equal. When men and women are
separated in the analysis of earnings, the “natives” retain an earnings
advantage among both genders. Mizrahi Jewish women are outperforming the
Ashkenazi Jewish women.
Recent immigrants in Israel are at an earnings disadvantage compared
to the other population groups. Controlling for age, education, and the
other non-ethnic factors, recent immigrants earn about 5.5 percent less
in total individual earnings while for salary alone (not shown in the
table), they earn 10-14 percent less than other Israelis. The earnings
disadvantage is larger for men than for women. Interestingly, immigrants
from Africa (mainly Ethiopians) do not suffer from any special earnings
disadvantage as compared with the earnings levels of all recent
immigrants. All immigrants are at a modest disadvantage in the labor
market, but Ethiopians no more so than non-Ethiopian immigrants. When
men and women are analyzed separately, Ethiopians slightly outperform
the other immigrants.

Are Israeli Arabs Disadvantaged Because of Schooling?

Economists like to describe schooling and degrees as “human capital,”
and it is possible to measure the returns or market rewards to this
capital using statistical methodologies. One issue that has frequently
been debated in Israel is whether educated Arabs are at a market
disadvantage, since—because of discrimination—they are less capable of
capitalizing upon their educational achievements.[15]
Once again, the presumption of discrimination does not survive
empirical statistical analysis. The truth is quite the opposite: The
return on schooling for Israeli Arabs is generally considerably higher
than it is for Israeli Jews. In almost every estimate, using different
measures of schooling and of earnings, the return on education appears
to be higher for Arabs after controlling statistically for other
variables.[16] This is true both
for salaries and for all individual earnings. Since the reward for
educational achievement is, if anything, higher for Arabs than for Jews,
this rules out the claim of systematic discrimination against Arabs who
accumulate human capital and capitalize upon it in the labor market.
The return on schooling is not the same, however, as the reward for
membership in elite professions. Arabs, like Jews, who are members of
managerial or other professional groups (lawyers, doctors, engineers,
etc.) enjoy a significant earnings advantage over those who are not
members of these groups. The bonus or premium for Arabs, however, is
lower than that for Jews. Discrimination cannot be ruled out as a causal
factor here although other factors unrelated to discrimination could
also explain these disparities, including differences in distribution
among professions within the broader elite professional categories.

Where Is the Apartheid?

The most surprising conclusion from the econometric analysis of
ethnic earnings disparities in Israel is how many of the stereotypical
characterizations of Israel turn out to be false. Ethnicity in Israel
simply does not play a large role in the labor market, in contrast with
gender or schooling.
While it is widely presumed that the Arab minority underperforms in
the labor market of the Jewish state, either because of discrimination
or other structural or cultural disadvantages, this turns out not to be
so. That accusation is central to the claim that Israel is some sort of
apartheid regime. While the raw mean earnings of Arabs are considerably
lower than those of Jews, the two populations differ in many significant
ways, including age and schooling, and little can be concluded from
this raw comparison on its own. When education, age, marital status,
geographic location, and professional group membership are taken into
account, Arab-Jewish earnings disparities all but disappear, and in some
cases, they even invert, so that the Arabs outperform the Jews. This is
particularly true of male earners.If the data fail to show a clear
pattern of Arab underperformance in earnings compared with Jews with
similar levels of schooling, the stereotype of Ashkenazi Jews
outperforming Mizrahi or Sephardic Jews appears just as inaccurate. Once
education and the other explanatory variables are controlled, there is
very little difference between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim earnings, and in a
few cases, particularly for women, Mizrahim outperform Ashkenazi women.
The Ashkenazi-Mizrahi distinction certainly appears to be less
important in explaining earnings differences than the distinction
between native-born Jews and foreign-born Jews or recent immigrants.
Here again, there are differences between men and women. Ashkenazi women
slightly underperform Mizrahi women, other things being equal, while
Ashkenazi men slightly outperform compared with Mizrahi men. The bottom
line is that the data do not support the presumption that Mizrahim are
systematically disadvantaged in Israeli labor markets.
While new immigrants underperform relative to other Jewish Israelis,
other things being equal, Ethiopians do not appear to suffer from any
special earnings disadvantage compared with other immigrants. If
Ethiopian immigrants earn low levels of salary, it is because they have
low levels of schooling. But given their level of schooling, they earn
the same on average as immigrants from Russia, South Africa, and
Argentina. When estimating total individual income separately for men or
for women, the Ethiopians even slightly outperform the other
immigrants.
In spite of what statistical analyses have to show, the subject of
discrimination in Israel continues to fill the media, which seem to be
obsessed with it even while refusing to examine actual data. For
example, in the summer of 2013, a television documentary on Israel’s
Channel Ten, produced by popular journalist Amnon Levy, triggered
considerable media debate inside Israel. It claimed to have investigated
and discovered that anti-Mizrahi discrimination is as bad as it had
been back in the early decades of Israeli independence.[17] Real data show otherwise.
The problem is not just in the media. The academic careers of many in
Israel, particularly in sociology, have been constructed entirely upon
unsubstantiated allegations of Israeli racism. Israeli sociologists in
general tend to accept at face value the notion that any documented
disparity in earnings or numerical representation between Israeli Jews
and Arabs must be due to discrimination.[18]
Perhaps the most notorious example is that of Yehouda Shenhav, a
sociologist at Tel Aviv University. Shenhav is father of the notion that
“Oriental Jews” are in fact “Arabs of the Mosaic faith,” and together
with Arabs, share a victimhood imposed upon them by racist Ashkenazi
Zionists.[19] Shenhav and those of
similar ideological orientation operate the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow,
dedicated to liberating “Oriental Jews” from Ashkenazi bigotry and
capitalism.[20]
In Israel’s media, it is considered common knowledge that Arabs, Mizrahim, and Ethiopians are victims of harsh discrimination.[21]
The accusations of apartheid may be malicious, disingenuous, and
over-the-top—or so most Israeli commentators and sociologists would
agree—but the presumption of an underlying widespread pattern of
discrimination is, to their minds, undeniable. The extent to which some
in Israel go to manufacture evidence of discrimination can be
awe-inspiring. For example, the ordinarily prestigious Israel Democracy
Institute (IDI), a left-wing think tank, published a study in May 2013
that claimed to have discovered unambiguous proof of widespread
discrimination in Israel against Arabs.[22]
Composed by IDI legal staffer Tanya Steiner under the supervision of
Hebrew University professor Mordechai Kremnitzer, the study’s evidence
was the number of complaints about discrimination submitted to the
Israeli Commission on Equal Opportunities in Employment. Yet while
numerous complaints from women reached the commission, only 3 percent of
the complaints it received were from Israeli Arabs, who represent about
18 percent of the labor force. Of these, only three of the complaints
received in the entire 2011 year by the commission about alleged
anti-Arab discrimination were deemed worthy of investigation. So instead
of concluding that the evidence points to an absence of discrimination,
the IDI’s conclusion was that it all proves how badly discriminated
Israeli Arabs are in Israel; after all, they are so victimized that they
do not even file complaints about discrimination.

Conclusion

There is no evidence that points to ethnic discrimination against
Israeli Arabs or Mizrahi Jews in Israeli labor markets. Recent
immigrants appear to be the one group in the country at an earnings
disadvantage. But it would be difficult to make a case that even their
disadvantage is due to discrimination since immigrants in all societies
are at a competitive disadvantage compared with natives.
There could be other groups in Israeli society that are victims of
discrimination, but the data are not available in a form that allows for
investigation. In particular, a plausible case for such discrimination
may be that against ultra-Orthodox Jews. Gender discrimination also
cannot be ruled out, but that is a separate and difficult methodological
question beyond the scope of the discussion here.
The nearly complete absence of evidence of ethnic discrimination in
Israeli labor markets does not, of course, preclude its existence in
other markets or aspects of society. As was shown here, Arabs earn a
higher return on education than Jews. But this does not rule out
possible discrimination against Arabs in admissions to universities and
colleges. It should be noted, however, that Israeli universities
routinely implement affirmative action preferences in favor of Arabs and
sometimes in favor of Mizrahim (and women).[23]
The only other documented university discrimination is that which
grants some preferences to army veterans, a practice found in most
countries.
There have also been allegations that Israel discriminates in its
fiscal allocations and revenue sharing where Arab towns and villages are
underfunded. But an empirical analysis of the question found just the
opposite; if anything, the Arab local authorities were being
over-funded.[24] Evidence regarding
other alleged forms of discrimination by Israel tends to be just as
skimpy. Some accusations are based upon Israel’s granting automatic
citizenship to Jews under its “Law of Return.” But such citizenship
entitlements are not unusual in the world and can be found in many other
countries, such as Armenia, Greece, Bulgaria and Romania, and are
guaranteed under the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human
Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.[25]
Another indictment of Israel concerns the discriminatory nature of its
military conscription. Jews and Druse are conscripted into the Israeli
military while Arabs may volunteer for service but are not conscripted.
Again, this practice may indeed constitute discrimination but that
discrimination is against Jews, not against Arabs.
None of this proves that discrimination never exists in Israel
against Arabs, against Mizrahi Jews, or anyone else. But the very fact
that empirical evidence of discrimination is so hard to discern or
observe must itself serve as an important warning indicator about its
magnitude or lack thereof.Steven Plaut teaches at the Graduate School of Management at the University of Haifa.

Table 1: Impact Effect of Various Factors on Salary Earnings for Men and Women[26]

(3)

Individual’s Total Income (includes self-employ and “other” income)
– Males and Females

(1)

Individual’s Total Income from all Sources
– Males Only

(3)

Individual Total Income
from all Sources
– Females Only

Age

Decreases by 1.3% for each extra year

Decreases by 1.1% for each extra year

Decreases by 1.5% for each extra year

Effect of adding one extra year of schooling

–

–

Increases 6.0%

Increment for having matriculation diploma (only)

Decreases by 6.0%

Decreases by 7.6%

–

College graduate dummy (increment over matriculation alone)

Increases 39.6%

Increases 42.5%

–

Postgraduate degree (increment over having BA)

Increases 10.6%

Increases 12.5%

–

Increment for being married

Increases 44.9%

Increases 56.5%

Increases 35.5%

Increment for being male

Increases 35.3%

–

–

Adding one person to household size

Decreases by 3.6%

Decreases by 3.4%

Decreases by 3.8%

Increment for being Arab

Increases 8.5%

Increases 9.8%

Decreases by 2.1%

Increment for being native born (sabra) Israeli Jew

Increases 7.3%

Increases 8.3%

Increases 2.1%

Increment for being Ashkenazi

Decreases by 0.1%

Increases 1.8%

Decreases by 3.7%

Increment for residence in Jerusalem

Decreases by 7.6%

Decreases by 15.4%

Decreases by 3.2%

Increment for residence in Tel Aviv

Increases 17.2%

Increases 15.0%

Increases 20.6%

Increment for residence in Haifa

Decreases by 13.5%.

Decreases by 12.0%

Decreases by 15.0%

Increment for being new immigrant (arrived since 1990)

Decreases by 5.5%

Decreases by 7.5%

Decreases by 4.3%

Increment for being new immigrant from Africa (over previous increment for being immigrant)

[22] Talya Steiner, Combating Discrimination against Arabs in the Israeli Workforce, Policy Paper No. 97 (Jerusalem: Israel Democracy Institute, 2003).[23]Haaretz, Nov. 19, 2009; John Rosenberg, “Affirmative Action … In Israel,” Discriminations Blog, Sept. 3, 2002; Noga Dagan-Buzaglo, “Non-discriminatory hiring practices in Israel towards Arab Citizens, Ethiopian Israelis and new immigrants from Bukhara and the Caucasus,” Adva Center, Tel Aviv, Nov. 2008.[24] Tal Shahor, “Fiscal Allotment Policy vis á vis Minorities: An Empirical Measurement of the Way in Which Israel’s Majority Government Makes Its Fiscal Allotments to the Arab Minority,” Metodološki zvezki (Ljubljana, Slovenia), no. 1, 2010, pp. 73-93; Efraim Karsh, “Israel’s Arabs: Deprived or Radicalized?” Israel Affairs, Jan. 2013, pp. 1-19.[25]Universal Declaration of Human Rights, United Nations General Assembly, New York, Dec. 10, 1948, art. 14.[26] The effects of isolated
changes in individual factors while holding all other factors constant.
The “default” or base case upon which the ethnic increments are computed
is for “Foreign-born Mizrahi Jews.” The figures in the table should be
taken as the best estimate for changes in earnings caused by isolated
changes in each individual explanatory factor (ethnicity, gender, and so
on) while holding all other factors constant. This shows the isolated
effect for Arabs, for example, on earnings while holding schooling, age,
and other factors constant. The schooling variable is measured
differently for the men-only column (where the effects of achieving
degrees are estimated) than for the women-only column (where the effect
of an additional year of schooling is estimated). The estimates allow us
to see the “clean” effects or impacts of ethnicity and other factors
upon earnings in Israel because these effects are statistically isolated
from the many intermingled effects of the other variables. Estimates
taken from regression analysis equations that are elaborated and appear
in full in Pnina O. Plaut and Steven E. Plaut, “Income Disparities by
Ethnicity in Israel,” Israel Affairs, forthcoming.
Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://www.frontpagemag.com
URL to article: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/steven-plaut/the-myth-of-ethnic-inequality-in-israel/

Caroline Glick & Mark Levin: The Israeli Solution -- A One-State Pla

Why Israel Opposes International Forces in the Jordan Valley

U.S. scholars' group votes in favor of academic boycott of Israel

Yet another indication of the absolute corruption of American academia today. "US scholars' group votes in favor of academic boycott of Israel," from the Jerusalem Post, December 16: NEW YORK – The 5,000-member American Studies Association (ASA), which describes itself as “the nation’s oldest and largest association devoted to...http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/12/us-scholars-group-votes-in-favor-of-academic-boycott-of-israel.html

Israel Living Prophecy

A senior New Israel Fund officer told a U.S. official in 2010 that the disappearance of the Jewish state would not be a tragedy, according to a document that was leaked by Wikileaks...She commented that she believed that in 100 years Israel would be majority Arab and that the disappearance of a Jewish state would not be the tragedy that Israelis fear since it would become more democratic.

Mideast expert Michael Widlanski: Fatah is a joke

US-Israeli talks focus on Ahmadinejad's possible ouster

How to exploit the deep cracks forming in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's administration for removing the Iranian president was a top item on the agenda of the high-level talks between Barack Obama's advisers and Israeli officials at Mossad headquarters in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, Wednesday, July 29.

DEBKAfile's Iranian sources report that Ahmadinejad's cabinet is falling apart; of his original lineup of 21 ministers, only nine remain at their posts.

The Identity Of The Land

Why the Palestinians need to recognize the Jewish State

We do NOT support a 2-state solution

A January 2009 poll found that Americans oppose creating a Palestinian state by 45-31 percent. A February 2009 Maagar Mohot Survey Institute poll has also shown that Israelis oppose creating a Palestinian state by 51-32 percent.

Many other polls tell a similar story.

These figures suggest that Americans and Israelis have understood that creating a Palestinian state under current conditions will not bring peace but merely another terror state.

Netanya,Israel

Jerusalem At Night

Why reconstruct Gaza without making demands

- that Shalit be release without convicted terrorists being released by Israel in exchange,

- that the US be put in charge of the southern border to ensure that Hamas isn’t rearmed?

- that their three preconditions be accepted by Hamas, i.e. agree to all former agreements,recognize Israel and renounce terror

- that Hamas amend their Charter

- That Hamas disconnect from Iran

The answer is that they don’t want to.

Children of Hamas

Picture of Hamas children the media does not show you

IDF: Civilian Deaths in Gaza Less than 25% of Total

A maximum of 25% of the Palestinians killed in Gaza since the beginning of the Israeli operation are innocent civilians, the head of the IDF's Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA), Col. Moshe Levi, said Wednesday. According to Palestinian medical officials, Israel has killed some 1,000 Palestinians and more than half of them are civilians. Levi said the CLA had compiled a list with the names of 900 Palestinians killed during the fighting. He said that 150 names were of women, children and elderly, and that the maximum number of civilians killed so far was 250. Levi also dismissed claims that 43 Palestinians were killed in an IDF attack on a Hamas terror cell that was firing mortars at Israeli forces from within an UNRWA school in Jabalya. Levi said 21 Palestinians were killed in the attack, including a number of Hamas operatives. (Jerusalem Post)

Hamas teaching the children of Gaza

An Iranian reformist daily newspaper has criticized Hamas "for risking lives of civilians, amongst them children, by hiding its forces in nurseries and hospitals." This is reported in today's Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam. The Palestinian daily adds that in response the Iranian government has closed the newspaper.

"The Iranian news agency "Irna" reported yesterday, that the Iranian Culture Ministry has closed the reformist daily newspaper "Karjo Zaran", because it published a report that included criticism of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). On December 30 the paper published a statement of a reformist student organization, that has criticized Hamas for risking lives of civilians, amongst them children, by hiding its forces in nurseries and hospitals. The statement was published whilst the Iranian government expresses a unified stands against Israel, and Tehran is overwhelmed by demonstrations against Israel."

[Al-Ayyam, Jan. 1, 2009] Thanks PMW

Iran-backed Hamas Rocket, Mortar Attacks and Nuclear Developments

9,400+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since 2003. [1]3,200+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza in 2008 alone. [2]6,500+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. [3]543+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza into Israeli territory during the ceasefire from June 19 to Dec. 19, 2008. [4]28 deaths caused by rockets and mortars fired from Gaza into Israel since 2001. The dead include Israelis, Palestinians and foreign workers. Since the ceasefire ended, Iran-backed Palestinian groups in Gaza fired rockets and mortars that killed an Israeli-Arab construction worker and a mother of four who was seeking shelter in a bus station as a rocket warning siren sounded. [5]1,000+ people in Israel injured from rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since 2001, including Israelis, Palestinians and foreign workers. Since the ceasefire, 44 Israelis have been injured and 200 have been treated for shock. [6]Thanks Israel Project

It began with this...

The British Foreign Office, November 2nd, 1917Dear Lord Rothschild,I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate theachievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities inPalestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.2

Signed,Arthur James Balfour[Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs]

Favorite Books

While Europe Slept

About Me

Semi-retired Professor, now also permanent resident of Israel;divides time between both countries-serves on several Boards of Directors for Israel advocacy groups;Chana, resident of Jerusalem, JCPA member

Syria is an Occupier-Are You Listening World?

As of this minute, Syria occupies at least 177 square miles of Lebanese soil. That you are now reading about it for the first time is as much a scandal as the occupation itself.

The news comes by way of a fact-finding survey of the Lebanese-Syrian border just produced by the International Lebanese Committee for UN Security Council Resolution 1559, an American NGO that has consultative status with the UN. In meticulous detail - supplemented by photographs and satellite images - the authors describe precisely where and how Lebanon has been infiltrated.

Though the land grabs are small affairs individually, they collectively add up to an area amounting to about 4% of Lebanese soil - in U.S. terms, the proportional equivalent of Arizona. Of particular note is that the area of Syrian conquest dwarves that of the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms which amount to an area of about 12 square miles.

It would be nice to see the Arab world protest this case of illegal occupation, given its passions about the subject.

Information worth Possessing

"Israel gave the Palestinians an autonomy in 42% of the West Bank and Gaza after the Oslo accords in the early 90's. Over 92% of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza were then under the administration of the Palestinian Authority and its Chairman Yasser Arafat.

"Israel is surrounded by 10 hostile Arab countries who do not even recognize its right to exist ( Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, Lybia, Morocco, Tunisia, Aden) and Iran"